Difference Between Today and 30/40 yrs Ago

This is a discussion on Difference Between Today and 30/40 yrs Ago within the Carry & Defensive Scenarios forums, part of the Defensive Carry Discussions category; You know, you hit upon something that we hardly ever think about. I don't hear people talk about it much at all. The population increase ...

You know, you hit upon something that we hardly ever think about. I don't hear people talk about it much at all. The population increase over the years and the food necessary to feed everyone. It seems to be something that people are aware of but they don't think about very often.

While we never took guns to school where I lived, we all had pocket knives and such. We all hunted after getting home from school. None of us did anything worse than shooting a few birds and once a fight was done, that was pretty much the end of things other than some heckling on occasion. I was always the smallest kid and I got picked on all through school - and never once did I consider taking a weapon to school to attack someone.

I really think that parents are failing our society and its nothing that can be fixed by legislation, but by education and parents stepping up to their responsabilities. We are always going to have good people who snap and do bad things, but we are producing bad people now it seems to me...

And while not as old as the op I imagine, I still look around and shiver when I think about the condition of our society.

If you want to put a date on when things started sliding downhill real fast, it was 1968. We were already on the slipery slope though from the 1930's and 1950's knife and gun laws. But the gun laws passed in 1968 tipped the scale.
When I went into the Military in 1965 one could still purchase firearms from mailorder and have it sent to your house, when I got back stateside in 1969 new laws were passed that caused even a lot of stores to stop selling firearms. As time passed there have been fewer and fewer dealers. There was a time, pre 1968, that every major department store has a large hunting and fishing department.

I would say that 1968 is exactly right. I was USMC 1963-67 and I remember getting out and having things change but I thought it was due to all the college campuses going crazy and everyone protesting against everything under the sun, just to be protesting against something.
But I think this downward slide probably began way back in the 50s after WWII when people were really disillusioned then after being in such a war and wanted to have everything afterwards to kind of make up for it, so they got more and more and aimed higher for more material things and that may have been the real beginning, but you are right about 1968, if I had to pick one year where it was starting to change dramatically, that would be the one. Too bad to see it, too.
And nowadays it is absolutely out of control, and so are most of the people on the streets, and that is why we need guns, because these people nowadays, the criminal types, they no longer want to just rob people, they want to hurt people, too, and that is epidemic. And we are the doctors they need to administer doses of lead poisoning as required.
I would not leave my house without my Ruger SP101, not even to get a quart of milk.
Sad.
You never know what nitwit is around looking for his next victim.

Any time someone brings up the good old days I think about many things both good and bad. In 1960 my 6 year old cousin was playing and fell off the porch onto a broken jar which cut her throat. About 4 hours later she died in operating room. Todaydue to modern medicine I am absolutely sure that not only she would have survived but probably have gone home the next day.

About 1990 a seventh grade friend of my daughters got mad and brought a gun to school. He decided not to use it so got scared and cut school. I don't know what happened exactly but about 500 yards from the school he shot himself. It wasn't fatal but it wasn't nearly as big of a deal then as now.

The father of a friend of mine was showing off his .22 caliber revolver when for some reason it fired. It hit his 14 year old son and killed him immediatly.

Many times I long for the good old days where you could order a gun through the mail, get your drivers license at 14, didn't have to wear seatblets, (got the scar over my left eye to prove that), and a bunch of other things. But I also know that I just had three vertebrae fused in my neck and went home the next day. I remeber the time when such an operation would have required traveling to some specialized clinic and 6 weeks in the hospital and untold rehabilitation.

I forgot!

Originally Posted by havegunjoe

I can remember kids bringing .22's to school and putting them in their lockers for rifle team practice after school. I can remember if you were the target of a bully and you decided to beat the crap out of said bully instead of taking it you were considered a hero of sorts. I can remember every guy in grade school had some kind of pocket knife on them from about age 8 on up. I can remember playing until dark, (and sometimes even after dark), in the summer time and your parents didn't worry. Why? Because every parent on the block was your parent and would slap the crap out of you if you were doing anything stupid, and your parents wouldn't sue them, they would thank them then slap the crap out of you again. I can remember muscle cars.

Man I am getting old as well as sick and tired of the liberal B.S. that goes on in the world today.

I can remember every kid had a BB gun and we took them everywhere. We even occasionally shot one another. Boy did they sting. Not one parent freaked out about it and nobody shot an eye out.

I remember in the late fifties when every boy I knew carried a pocket knife to school. We played mumblety peg and stretch with our knives on the playground at recess. Many kids owned bb guns and we spent a lot of time plinking with them. While visiting my grandparents in the country, my brother and I would spend an entire day roaming the woods with my grandpa's .22 rifle. We were 15 and 13 years old. We bought our ammo from a local country store. The only comment from the store owner was a "Now you boys be careful, you hear."

Hi Larry, Semper Fi, USMC 1963-67, right after the Little Big Horn, it seems.
Everyone had Boy Scout knives of one kind or another. And no one played in a careless way with them. Nowadays we would be in some federal juvenile prison for ten years for carrying one. Add another five years for playing a game with the knife :) Exaggerating but you get the picture. Not too much of an exaggeration if some could have their way these days.

Hi dcb188. Semper Fi
When I was in junior high school, if two guys got in a fist fight at school the coach marched them to the gym. There he strapped them into some large boxing gloves and had them fight until they couldn't stand up. They (and we boys watching) learned a lesson about proper behavior at school and usually found a better way to resolve conflicts in the future.

I remember things like that, Larry. Everyone was the better for it. It stopped a lot of future fights because you knew you would end up in a real boxing match. What would happen nowadays? I can see it now. COACH ABUSES CHILDREN BY FORCING THEM TO FIGHT. STANDS BY AND DOES NOTHING. Ten years in federal prison......Oh, just to go back in time when common sense was rampant.